


Skin

by MagicandMess (magicandmess)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandmess/pseuds/MagicandMess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Struggling tattoo artist Jon Snow meets his toughest customer when Sansa Stark decides to honour her boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really have no idea where this came from, but I've been wanting to write a drabble (or potentially more) for this pairing and I've been binge watching a lot of television... I've never written these two, though, so please be kind. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

The skin of her wrist is soft as he turns it over in his hand, a pale cream over a tartan network of blueish veins which look so delicate beneath his fingers. His bitten nails and ink stains that never seem to leave his hands look filthy in comparison and he releases her in seconds. “Are you sure about this?” her friend asks, looking up from her phone for the first time since they arrived and eyeing him with distrust.  
  
“Of course I am!” she snaps in return, shooting her friend a look.  
  
“It's awfully permanent is all,” the friend replies and Jon buries himself in reading over the customer's release form. Sansa Stark, it reads, and he notes that her handwriting is as delicate as her skin, barely leaving a dent in the page. Scrawling his own signature across the bottom of the page, he looks up, his eyes asking the silent question of whether she would like to proceed.  
  
“I should probably tell you that we do warn against name tattoos, particularly if it's the name of a significant other,” he says. It's customary to tell all their customers this – damage limitation, they call it in the shop – to prevent the customer returning and demanding a free cover-up, but Jon has his own, selfish reasons for the warning. Sansa is an unusual name, he reasons, watching for a reaction. And it's not hard to believe that she could have a brother named Joffrey. A poor, deceased brother with a tragic background who she dearly wishes to commemorate and Jon is already thinking about this fictional sibling when his co-worker butts in from across the studio.  
  
“That's just cause he's stuck with a shitty cover-up, doll. Don't you worry, I'm sure yours will turn out better.”  
  
“Yeah, and who did the shitty cover-up, Grenn?” Jon calls, rolling his eyes as his friend returns to his own customer, laughing as he begins the tale of Jon's abysmal tattoo. “Look, I'm not trying to talk you out of this – that would be bad for business – but there's a reason we call these tattoos the kiss of death. Getting someone's name tattooed on you rarely works out well. Believe me – you don't want to be the guy who's scared of birds rocking an eagle on his back 'cause it's the only thing you could trust your apprentice to tattoo on you.”  
  
It elicits a giggle from Sansa, a sound so pretty that he wants to tell her of all the other mishaps in his life to hear it again, over and over.  
  
“No, I'm sure,” she says with a nod of her head, cutting story time short. “Joffrey and I are different. I want this.” Tapping the inside of her wrist, she grins across at Jon, still nodding. “Right here.”  
  
As Jon busies himself with his machine, lining up his black and white inks, the girls speak amongst themselves and his head snaps up when he realises a question has been directed at him. “Will this be long?” Sansa's friend – Jeyne, he thinks she's called – asks, to which he shrugs.  
  
“Twenty minutes or so. Maybe longer. You can't rush these things,” he replies, wishing she had booked an appointment and wasn't just a walk in. That way he'd have her for at least an hour – there would be chance enough to make her laugh again in an hour. Of that he was certain.  
  
“Whatever. I'm going shopping. Ring me when you're done,” it's all directed at Sansa, but as her friend leaves, her words are like music to Jon's ears. Twenty minutes or so with this girl. Alone. Give or take Grenn and his customer. And Gilly out at the desk.  
  
“Alright then,” he says, pulling on his gloves and grabbing his tub of Vaseline. “You ready?”  
  
“Will it hurt?” she asks, her voice timid as he prepares her skin and his lips pull into a smile as he looks up at her.  
  
“You think I'd be covered if it hurt?” he asks, motioning to his own arms, which display a variety of pictures and designs. When she opens her mouth to answer him, however, he cuts her off. “Honestly, it's not the best feeling in the world and sometimes, yeah, it fucking hurts. But it depends where you're getting it and what you're getting. You should be alright. The wrist isn't the worst place to get tattooed.” Dipping his machine tip into the first pot of ink, he adds, “That's the ribs, so far. For me, anyway.”  
  
She's not the first tattoo virgin he's worked with and he knows all the right sounds to make as he reassures her of the pain. “Look, I'm going to freehand this, right? So how about I do one little test stroke – a dot, even?” he offers, one gloved finger drawing circles on her skin. “And if you don't like it, then we stop and you have a brand new freckle. If you do, you have old Jeffrey's name tattooed on your wrist.”  
  
“Joffrey! You can't get it wrong!” It takes a second or two to realise he's joking and she laughs, her nerves dissipating as she nods. “Lets do it!”  
  
Despite it being a social profession, one which means spending almost all of your working hours with other people, Jon is silent as he works. Grenn is known for laughing and joking with his customers, while Pyp sings along to loud rock music in an attempt to drown out the buzz of his machine but Jon has always been quiet, something his customers often mistake for him being overly cautious and concentrated. With Sansa, however, he seems unable to shut up.  
  
“So how long have you and this Joffrey been dating, then?” he asks, not all that sure he wants to hear anything about their relationship. She's a beautiful girl and he can't imagine this Joffrey could possibly deserve her.  
  
“Since June,” she replies, the creamy skin of her cheeks flushing with colour as he leans in, eyebrows raised. “Don't give me that look!” She protests on an exhale, having sucked in a breath when the needle bit into her skin.  
  
“What look?” Jon asks, raising his machine.  
  
“The look that says you think I'm moving too fast.”  
  
“There was no such look. But since you're more bothered about my look than the pain, I take it I can continue?”  
  
With a small smile and a nod, Sansa tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She knows what to expect, now, and she watches as Jon shifts, dipping back into the ink before returning to her skin. “So how long where you and your girlfriend together before you got all inked up then?” she asks.  
  
“Two and a half years. Nearly four by the time she dumped me and I had to get Edd.”  
  
“Edd?”  
  
“The Eagle. So bad it has it's own name. It's a thing of legend, really...” he replies, eyes never leaving her skin as he continues the tattoo. “It's not a bad tattoo or anything,” he adds, realising that Grenn has his own customer who can no doubt hear them. “But it's a fucking bird...”  
  
“I'm sure Edd is very beautiful.” Sansa replies, trying not to laugh and just then, for one minute, Jon thinks he might be a goner as his stomach does a lurching swoop.  
  
And so it continues, the two chatting away with a haunting familiarity. It's as though he's known her for years as they chat about where she goes to university and how her friend Margaery once had a tattoo lasered off after she was told it meant 'pork chop' in another language. As the time and tattoo draw to a close, Jon tries not to sound too disappointed and it's with a rueful smile that he wipes down her tattoo, smiling up at her. “So, all done,” he tells her raising her wrist in his hand to give her a better look. “What do you think?”  
  
“Oh I love it!” she exclaims, and just watching her smile down at it, at his work, it enough to make Jon laugh.  
  
Removing his gloves, he nods and pushes to his feet. “If you want to have another look over in the mirror, Gilly will wrap it up for you and you can square her up with the payment. It was lovely to meet you Sansa,” he says, his words a jumble as he heads straight for the back door, his cigarettes out of his pocket before it can even close behind him. He's never like this over customers; day in-day out he has beautiful women come in, half of whom seem to be getting topless for this latest sternum tattoo craze and he has never once looked twice at them yet here he is, hands shaking over a girl he's spoken to for twenty minutes and to tattoo her boyfriend's name on her, no less. He really is the worst type of person.  
  
It takes days to get her off his mind, the way her skin had felt under his hand, the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed. Days to stop thinking about her. Days and a blonde named Val who enters the studio for some warrior woman design on her leg that Jon barely remembers doing and leaves with his number and the promise of a good night.  
  
Weeks pass and Val fades from memory, as does the faint smell of floral perfume and the tinkling sound of Sansa's laugh. It's only in locking up one Thursday night that he hears it, high heels clacking on the pavement and he instinctively turns to move out of the woman's way. “Do you think Grenn might be available?” the voices asks, and Jon looks up, brow furrowed as he sees Sansa in front of him, dark smudges under her eyes as she sniffs. “It's just I think that I might need him to find me Edd's little sister.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consoling heartbroken girls has never been Jon's forte.

It's quiet in Hot Pie's, the evening dinner rush having already left leaving the table Jon usually frequents empty. It's not much – a greasy spoon with Formica tables covered in wipe-down red and white tablecloths – but it's the only place open when Night's Watch closes and it's become a regular haunt for the artists who work there. 

Ordering two coffees at the counter, they take a seat with the promise that they'll be right over. “So...” he begins, suddenly acutely aware of the ink on his hand and the scent of medical grade soap which always lingers on him after a long shift. “You want to talk about it?” It's almost comical, him trying to strike up conversation when he's usually so stoic and silent. Or at least, it would be, were it not for the blood rushing in his ears and the teary-eyed girl sitting across from him.

For a second, she sits in silence, eyes staring blankly at the seven letters on her wrist and Jon is certain that she regrets coming to see him. In fact, he's beginning to wonder if she came to see him at all – the street is a busy one and it's not uncommon for people to use it as a short cut onto the Trident. Still, he reasons, already questioning where the coffees he ordered barely a minute ago are, she didn't have to agree to this if she wasn't looking for him. “He was with Margaery,” she says, her voice thick with emotion and betrayal as she tugs down her sleeve and smiles weakly at him.  
“Pork chop?” Jon asks, his lip curling in disgust. He hates to admit how much of their conversation he remembers, how he's committed everything from her perfume to the sound she makes when she laughs to memory. The noise Sansa makes then isn't quite a laugh, though he'll take it over a sob.

“Yeah, pork chop,” she replies, wiping at her eyes, though he can't see too many traces of tears. “I went to surprise him – took him lemon cakes to celebrate his exam results. He graduated this year. First class honours. Politics degree.” Jon tries not to roll his eyes – the man sounds like the very antithesis of him, some rich boy striving to be the next David Cameron or something. He can practically smell the expensive aftershave which no doubt clings to him like a second skin. “Anyway, I go over and the door is unlocked – I start thinking that maybe he knew I was coming over or something so I just head in and start setting up the cakes on the kitchen table and I call out to him, but he doesn't reply. So I'm sorting things out, getting two glasses for some prosecco, and I hear a bang. Not loud or anything, just enough that I can hear it and know he's upstairs.”

Swallowing thickly, Sansa shifts in her seat, watching as Hot Pie brings over the coffees, her hands instinctively reaching for the sugar packets. Once Hot Pie leaves and is out of earshot, she continues, avoiding eye contact. “So I started thinking that, you know, maybe it could be a different kind of surprise.”

Her words, despite her clear meaning, sound so innocent to Jon that he stares at her, raising an eyebrow until she looks up, her eyes widening slightly. “Oh! Right, gotcha,” he says, suddenly very interested in his coffee.

“Anyway, I kicked off my shoes and I've started to head upstairs and suddenly, well, suddenly it's not a bang I can hear any more. It's, you know, I can hear them. So I got closer and I pushed open the door and there she is – Pork Chop – and she's on top of him. Riding away.” She doesn't look like an angry girl but anger takes over then and she tugs on her sugar packet a little too enthusiastically, coating herself and the coffee in front of her in sugar, the contents spilling everywhere. “I saw it, you know? That stupid tattoo. It's still there. Barely.” Chewing on the inside of her lip, she looks up from the sugary mess she's created and smiles, though it is lost underneath sad eyes. “That's sort of what made me come over. I saw the tattoo and thought of you...”

“I'm not sure if that's a compliment to a tattoo artist,” he offers, trying to make a joke of it, though his timing is all off and he shakes his head. “You know, you see a shit tattoo and think of me... It doesn't matter. I was just kidding.”

“You don't do this much, do you?” Sansa asks, watching him with a keen interest which makes him feel horribly under scrutiny.

“Generally, I'm not the guy people go to when their boyfriend cheats on them, no,” he replies, knowing that his neck and chest have probably flushed a brilliant shade of red – Ygritte always liked to point that out whenever he got nervous or embarrassed. “I'm not really good at consoling people.”

“If I'd wanted consoling, I'd have gone to Jeyne.” She's so matter of fact and sure of herself then that Jon is taken aback. It's the strongest her voice has sounded since they sat down. “I came to you because in the twenty minutes you spoke to me, I felt more like a human than I have done in the past few weeks with Joff.” She swallows, and the certainty is gone, just like that. “I really liked him. I mean, I thought I loved him.” Eyes flickering to her covered tattoo, she sighs. “But sometimes, it was like he was just talking at me, not to me, you know? And conversations should be a two-way thing and that is so ironic considering I've just sat talking at you for the past ten minutes so I'm just going to shut up now.”

Her words roll off the tongue so quickly, each tumbling after the other and Jon barely has a chance to catch up. Sitting facing her, his lips parted slightly, it's all he can do to stare. “Huh?” he replied when he realises she's stopped speaking and now he's certain that his neck is red. Rubbing at the back of it, he winces before replying. “Sorry, I kind of...spaced. It's not you. I was listening, I just...yeah.” His embarrassment, he feels, is palpable and he winces, allowing the silence to fall once more.

“What did you do? When she left you, I mean?” Sansa asks, trying to force the conversation into that 'two way thing' she had mentioned previously, both to distract her from Joffrey and to learn some sort of coping technique.

“There was a lot of alcohol involved,” he admits, his grey eyes, now locked on her, filled with guilt and shame. “I didn't know how to accept it, you know? One minute we're talking about getting married and the next the flat's empty, too big and quiet...So I drank a lot.” Rubbing at the scruff adorning his cheeks, he looks away, glancing at his long forgotten coffee before making eye contact once more, this time looking slightly more hopeful. “But then Grenn, Pyp and Gilly's boyfriend Sam, they staged this weird intervention in the shop and within days I'm signed up for Sober October, I've raised over a grand for charity and I've all but forgotten Ygritte.”

“Ygritte? Was that her name?” Jon nods, the very sound of those syllables on Sansa's lips somehow wrong. He knows he's made it sound too good to be true and that if he'd wanted to give her a real indication of how heart broken he'd been, he would have told her that the smallest things still remind him of Ygritte, that the smell of her shampoo never really left his bed linen no matter how many times he washed it and how no matter how many drinks he has or avoids, he never really forgets her. “Her loss, if you ask me.”

“Thanks, I think.” Jon laughs and it almost chokes him. He's made things too serious and now he's sitting here laughing – everything seems out of place and badly timed and every time he opens his mouth he wishes he could shut it again. He's mulling over what he could possibly say that doesn't sound like a badly written Hallmark card when Sansa smiles, halting all of his thoughts at once.  
“So when are we doing it, then?” she asks, and his eyebrows shoot North. “My cover-up.”

“Oh, you want Grenn for that. King of cover-ups, that man.”

“I don't want Grenn to do it,” she smiles, though her eyes still look teary, like she can't quite decide whether she's happy or sad and when she reaches across to touch his hand, Jon's head snaps up almost painfully. “I want you to do it. You told me not to get it done and, well, you can call this your 'I told you so'. Plus, I trust you.”

It's stupid and naïve and the heart near pounding out of his chest is almost painful as he drains his coffee, snatching his hand back. “Look, I really need to go. I'm sorry. But if you come by when we're open, I can get Grenn on that free of charge. I'm really sorry about Joffrey and Pork Chop. They sound like bastards. Sorry, that's uncalled for. Sorry. I really need to go.”

He rushes his words and heads straight out the door, calling over his shoulder to Hot Pie that he'll square him up tomorrow and, as he heads into the cold night, he leans against the door, hands raking over his hair as he mutters 'fuck' like a mantra.

Sansa, left alone, sits silently, a small, confused smile crossing her features as she watches, wondering if he knows the door is made of glass.


End file.
